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September 9, 2010 |
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| June 29, 2010 |
By: Julie Kay |
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ttorney Ronald Kaniuk had a routine foreclosure mediation hearing scheduled in Miami on behalf of his defendant client. The problem was his office is in Boca Raton, and he would have spent much of his day on the road, waiting or sitting in court for a five-minute hearing.
Kaniuk turned to Jonathan Broder, who recently started MyMotionCalendar.com, a service that provides law firms with coverage attorneys to parachute in for hearings throughout the state. Kaniuk e-mailed Broder at 5:15 p.m. for a hearing the next morning.
Broder found a coverage attorney and forwarded the necessary court documents. The hearing was covered, and Kaniuk obtained the desired result — the judge referred the case to mediation.
“I would have spent four hours traveling round-trip for a 45-minute wait for a five-minute hearing at best,” said Kaniuk, a civil litigator with Ricardo Wasylik & Kaniuk. “Not only would it have killed my whole morning, it would have killed my whole day. Between traveling, parking and my time, this was more cost-effective than my covering the hearing.”
Since the launch two months ago of MyMotionCalendar.com,, Broder, who doubles as a legal recruiter, has dispatched hundreds of lawyers to Florida court hearings. In what he calls a win-win situation, Broder is providing work to the growing ranks of laid-off and underemployed attorneys while saving money for increasingly budget-conscious law firms by giving them an alternative to long trips for short, routine hearings.
“We’re in the black after two months. We’re profitable. We’re growing. People love the idea,” he said.
Historically, law firms have formed relationships with firms in other states and cities to represent them at nonsubstantive hearings.
Now, a few companies have started popping up to establish networks of coverage attorneys, including appearanceattorney.com and Court Appearance Professionals in California. Broder said his is the first such business in Florida.
Coverage attorney services appear to be filling a growing need, particularly in places like Florida and California, where the explosion of foreclosure cases and mediation referral requirements translate into courtrooms clogged with attorneys for motion calendars.
Signed up 20 Firm-Clients
While large law firms have offices crisscrossing the state and can easily send someone to cover the multitude of hearings in any case, a solo, small or even medium-sized firm might be hard-pressed to send an attorney across the state for short hearings. That’s where services like MyMotionCalendar.com come in.
Already, Broder said he has signed up 20 firm-clients and compiled a database of 2,000 lawyers around the state.
“The law firms love just having one number to call, and we take care of the rest,” he said. “They may have coverage attorneys they use in other cities, but they have to make 100 calls to chase them down. The greatest advantage we have is we’re a one-phone deal.”
Broder is having no trouble finding an army of lawyers willing to take the short-notice assignments.
“With all the layoffs out there, there’s an abundant supply of attorneys,” he said, adding he will not use attorneys without some level of experience. His attorneys run the gamut from working mothers to semi-retired attorneys to laid-off attorneys trying to start up their own practice — “anyone wanting flexibility.”
About 60 percent of the hearings are foreclosure-related. But Broder also is seeing demand for coverage of divorce, Social Security disability and credit-card collection cases. Additionally, since the Florida Supreme Court decertified a tobacco class action case, spawning thousands of cases around the state, Broder gets frequent calls for tobacco hearing coverage.
He works to match attorneys with comparable backgrounds to the hearings they’re being asked to cover.
And he makes sure the attorney gets the relevant documents and chats on the phone beforehand “to make sure we’re all on the same page.” Attorneys usually get 48 hours’ notice but in some cases — like Kaniuk’s — they get less than a day.
The hearings covered by MyMotionCalendar.com are nondispositive, meaning they are procedural and don’t typically have an impact on the broader case.
“There are substantive hearings or motions that should not be outsourced,” Broder said. “The idea is your time is better spent doing other things. We don’t pretend we’re the solution for managing your entire case. We’re freeing up your time to run your practice, to network, to meet with clients. It does not work for all matters.”
Pays a Fixed Rate
Broder pays attorneys a fixed rate ranging from $75 to $300 rather than an hourly fee, with room left for negotiations on out-of-town cases and for travel expenses.
One attorney who made her way to the top of Broder’s go-to list is Erin Grachow Whitebook. The Weston attorney graduated from law school three years ago and worked at two law firms — Fertig & Gramling of Fort Lauderdale and Kaye & Bender of Pompano Beach — before deciding to strike out on her own. The 32-year-old plans to start a family soon and likes the flexibility of coverage assignments. Since connecting with Broder, she has been handling two or three hearings a week in Lee, Broward and Miami-Dade counties.
“I’ll go anywhere if the price is right,” she laughed. While she wouldn’t say exactly how much she is earning, she said it is “commensurate” with her previous earnings.
Doesn’t Mind
Whitebook said she doesn’t mind doing less complex work and not having her own clients.
“Jonathan has everything prepared for me so I don’t have to do all the legwork,” she said. “I enjoy the dynamics of being in a courtroom and being in front of a judge. When I’m done with a hearing, I’m done.”
Does she ever feel ill-prepared, jumping into a case on short notice?
“No,” Whitebook said. “These hearings are very basic across the board. Any well-trained attorney should be able to do it.”
She said her attorney friends don’t look down on her for doing coverage work but rather are envious: “A lot are not satisfied with what they’re doing.”
But not all law firms are enthusiastic about coverage services. Juan Gonzalez, managing partner of Liebler Gonzalez Portuondo of Miami, which specializes in commercial foreclosure defense, is one of them.
“It may be OK when you’re dealing with residential foreclosures or smaller cases, but I would not rely on an attorney who is not an attorney in my firm,” he said.
“Our issues are usually complex, and I think it wouldn’t be what our clients expect if we were to subcontract the work to someone else. They are hiring us, not a third party.”
The only time he might consider the service is to attend a hearing on a motion to appoint a process server, for entry of default or on another procedural motion, Gonzalez said.
“Anything that is case-dispositive or case-impacting I would give one of the partners or senior associates at my firm,” he added. “I wouldn’t condone outsourcing that for my firm or anyone else’s. I don’t think it’s fair to the clients.”
Roy Oppenheim, a Weston attorney who specializes in foreclosure defense, sees potential conflicts inherent with coverage companies. Specifically, he would worry that one of Broder’s attorneys could be representing a lender one day and then representing a plaintiff against that defendant the next day.
‘Going into a Gray Area’
“The Bar rules don’t accommodate that service,” said Oppenheim of Oppenheim & Pilelsky. “We’re going into a gray area. It’s very tricky.”
Still, Oppenheim, like Gonzalez, said he might conceivably use Broder’s service “if it was in a part of the state where we don’t have an office.”
Not surprisingly, Alan Becker, managing partner of Fort Lauderdale-based Becker & Poliakoff, said he would have no use for a coverage attorneys because his law firm has offices blanketing the state.
“Most of our cases are large enough to justify an attorney from the firm participating,” he said. “However, I can see the value if you’re not local and don’t have someone local, and it’s something relatively routine. If you have a case worth a couple million dollars, it’s worth getting in a car and an airplane. If it’s a motion to continue, and it’s a $20,000 case, and it’s nondispositive, I can see using that.”
Julie Kay can be reached at (305) 347-6685.
Erin Grachow Whitebook photo by Melanie Bell
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